First of three articles.
Caretaking occupies a paradoxical place in the American mind. On the one hand, we cast caretaking for babies and children as a sacred duty of the private sphere. We lionize the bonds between parents and their children in movies, songs and storybooks. We romanticize the kinds of wisdom that are passed from an aging parent to a doting child in the dusk of life. At the end of our days, it is caring — love in action — that we feel matters most. On the other hand, we undervalue caretaking and tolerate schools, workplaces and neighborhoods designed for another era. According to the United States Department of Labor, 70 percent of mothers with children under 18 work outside the home, and mothers are the primary or sole earners for 40 percent of households, compared with 11 percent in 1960. But the United States remains off the list of 41 industrialized and developing countries that guarantee their citizens some form of paid family leave, according to the Pew Research Center. (The benefit is mandated in several states, however, including New York, California, New Jersey and Rhode Island.) The school day ends around 3 p.m. And we have a hodgepodge of living and care arrangements for the elderly and disabled, most of which are expensive, some of which have been making headlines lately for abuse and neglect. So we ennoble narratives of caregiving while simultaneously rating it low priority. The professionals — child care and elder care providers, most of them women of color, many of them immigrants — who work so hard to fill in that cognitive dissonance are underpaid and underprotected by labor laws. (The typical home care worker is paid only $15,100 a year.) As Ai-jen Poo, author of “The Age of Dignity” and a co-director of an advocacy organization, Caring Across Generations, puts it, “This is the work that makes all other work possible.” This is not a “women’s issue,” as it has so often been framed, even though women still do a majority of caretaking, both paid and unpaid. Nor is it an individual problem to be solved. As Sarita Gupta, the other co-director of Caring Across Generations, explains: “People are realizing that there is a care system and that it affects everyone. Everyone has a care story. Americans are starting to ask: Why is this so hard? They’re angry, confused and want to do something about it.” First, it’s critical to understand the demographic shifts at play. Millennials, the largest generation in the United States, are starting to have children. According to a recent report by New America, a centrist policy institute, “On any given day, about 12 million children under the age of 5 will need a safe place to go and someone loving to care for them.” The average annual cost to have your toddler in a child-care center full time is almost $10,000, higher than the average cost of in-state college tuition ($9,410) and 85 percent of the monthly median cost of rent in the United States. At the same time, baby boomers, the second-largest generation, are aging and requiring more care. By 2050, it’s estimated, 27 million people will need long-term care or personal assistance, or both, which now cost $3,000 a month on average per person. Members of the “sandwich generation,” as it is known — adults in their 40s and 50s — have it rough. According to the Pew Research Center, one in seven of them are providing financial support to both a child and an aging parent. But it’s not just demographics that are shifting; it’s also the life course itself. Laura L. Carstensen, a professor of psychology and the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, believes that the demand for caretaking has changed sharply as our life span has increased. “Until the 20th century, we couldn’t expect to live much past our late 40s,” she says. “Now you have people living pretty vibrantly well into their 80s. We all need to learn how to take care of others and how to be taken care of.” There are three dominant sectors in which people are trying to devise solutions to the impending caretaking crisis: for profit, nonprofit and government. In the for-profit case, according to a recent exploration by designers at IDEO, an international design and consulting firm, Americans generate $3.67 trillion in care work but pay only for $393 billion of it. “The whole system needs a reboot,” Patrice Martin, one of those designers, explains. “Care needs to be reimagined. We need to start designing for the families of today rather than the stories of yesterday.” Indeed, a variety of new businesses are being built to answer the call for more help. Wellthy Incorporated, for example, matches overwhelmed family caregivers with what the company calls a “personal health care assistant,” who can help do everything from refilling prescriptions and filling out Medicaid forms to finding support groups. Individuals pay $300 a month for this kind of concierge service, although a majority of Wellthy’s business now comes through companies that make this part of their benefit packages, having recognized the losses in productivity associated with the endless demands that caretaking makes on their employees’ time. In a recent study by the Harvard Business School, researchers found that more than 80 percent of employees with caregiving responsibilities admitted that caregiving affected their productivity. More entrepreneurs are also realizing the market potential in modernizing child care. Wonder School, for example, has attracted $24.1 million in funding in just two years. It has an online platform matching parents with care providers, but it also runs a “launch boot camp,” which helps people interested in opening their own in-home day care centers and preschools navigate the licensing process, create a website and find mentoring (for a 10 percent cut of their profits). Newer start-ups have a lot to learn from the missteps of older companies, like Care.com, which recently saw its stock value tumble when its vetting practices came under scrutiny, according to The Wall Street Journal. Care.com, which matches families and nannies in addition to providing a suite of other services, claims to have served 34 million people in 20 countries to date. The danger here is that these innovations will serve only those who can afford them, leaving the families who really need the support behind yet again. In fact, there has long been an under-the-radar national network of nonprofit centers that both connect working parents to child care and train child care providers. It’s called Child Care Resource and Referral, and the centers are known as CCR&Rs. They began popping up in the 1960s when women started entering the work force en masse. Today, there are CCR&Rs in 47 states, which draw on a variety of funding sources, including block grants, to do their essential grass-roots work. But finding quality child care is only one part of the puzzle. Joseph Jones, the founder and chief executive of a nonprofit called the Center for Urban Families, has been working with low-income families in Baltimore for 20 years. His organization works with 1,400 people a year, 70 percent of them parents. He says the hidden barrier to consistent child care is transportation. “These families have to take multiple buses just to drop their kids off, and then they’ve got to get to work,” Mr. Jones says. “One thing goes wrong and everything is thrown off, not to mention how the juggle cuts down on their ability to spend nurturing quality time with their kids.” There is reason to be hopeful, however, especially at the state level, which Ms. Gupta of Caring Across Generations identifies as the “front line of care.” Many states — Hawaii and Washington foremost among them — are adopting policies that demonstrate an overdue commitment to caretaking. Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington recently signed into law the nation’s first state-operated long-term-care insurance program for the public — a remarkable feat in that it required getting a state legislature behind a program that would raise taxes. There is progress at the national level, too. Early last year, Congress passed a bipartisan $2.4 billion increase for the Child Care Development Block Grant. Now, many presidential hopefuls are not only talking about care, but are outlining new policy proposals. A universal family care policy, like one Caring Across Generations proposed in June, would make caretaking and holding down a job easier for middle-class families (many of whom can’t afford care but also don’t qualify for assistance), and increase wages and stability for professional care workers. Grace Whiting, the president and chief executive of the National Alliance for Caregiving, explains: “It’s not a red and blue issue. Most of the caregiving legislation that’s been passed has, crazily enough, been passed under Trump’s administration. You have people on both sides of the aisle who have recognized that caregiving is an issue begging for creative solutions.” It is important to have a health insurance for any individual and you can check your eligibility for catastrophic health insurance pa and explore best plans for you.
1 Comment
14/10/2019 11:39:18 pm
Useful article! Indeed, a variety of new businesses are being built to answer the call for more help.
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